The National Organization of

Third International Symposium on Circumcision

University of Maryland

May 22-25, 1994

CLOSING ADDRESS

Thomas Szasz, MD

Routine Neonatal Circumcision: Symbol of the Birth of the
Therapeutic State (42 minutes)

"Let me reiterate my appreciation to Ms. Milos because
I really think that mounting an organized effort
against circumcision in this day and age is heroic and
she is going to be remembered ... I agree with your
position."

From the Syllabus of Abstracts of the Third International
Symposium on Circumcision (1994):

Routine Neonatal Circumcision: Symbol of the Birth of the
Therapeutic State

After briefly reviewing the religious origins of neonatal male
circumcision, this presentation analyzes its transformation into
a medical-prophylactic intervention. The birth of modern,
scientific medicine, during the early decdes of the nineteenth
century, set in motion a powerful trend to medicalize many human
behaviors previously proscribed or prescribed on religious
grounds, especially those involving sexual acts -- for example,
masturbation, homosexuality, and abortion. The medicalization of
routine neonatal circumcision (RNC) is therefore best understood
as part of this larger cultural phenomenon -- that is, as the
metamorphosis of sin into sickness, of magical ritual into
medical remedy. This view is consistent with the fact that no
modern society has cultivted the medicalization of deviance and
deterrence as energetically, or embraced RNC as enthusiastically,
as our society has.

Thomas Szasz, MD, received his A.B. and M.D. degrees from the
University of Cincinnati, his psychiatric training at the
University of Chicago and his psychoanalytic training at the
Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. Since 1956, he has been
Professor of Psychiatry at the State University of New York
Science Center in Syracuse, where he is now Professor Emeritus.
For some forty years, he has been the premiere critic of
psychiatric excuses and coercions. He is the author of 22 books,
including The Myth of Mental Illness; The Ethics of
Psychoanalysis; Sex by Prescription; The Manufacture of Madness;
Law, Libery and Psychiatry; and Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric
Control of Society's Unwanted.

[More videos of presentations at the Third International
Symposium on Circumcision to follow.]